Wages | Mayor Juhana Vartiainen does not agree to be interviewed about the responsibilities of Helsinki’s salary chaos – System editor and civil servants pass the ball to each other

Who bears the responsibility for Helsinki’s huge salary payment problems and how did the problems eventually get to the bottom? These two questions have been swirling in the air throughout the summer, when information about the extent of the problems has trickled into the public eye.

The salary problems have affected the vacation season of many city employees. Some have had to interrupt their vacations to sort out salary issues, some have had mental pressure overshadowing their vacations and concrete financial problems due to unpaid salaries.

Read more: This is how the salary payment of 39,000 people was thrown into inconsolable chaos – insiders in the city of Helsinki tell of the nightmarish chaos

Earlier this week, the deputy mayor for education and training Nasima Razmyar (sd) stated his position on responsibility issues directly. In his opinion, the responsible parties in the case are the mayor Juhana Vartiainen (coordinator) and head of the office Sami Sarvilinna.

HS asked Vartiainen and Sarvilinna about it already at the beginning of the week. Vartiainen communicated through his assistants that he would not have time to give an interview on the subject all week. As mayor of Helsinki, Vartiainen exercises the city’s greatest operational power. Sarvilinna HS reached after two days of searching.

Read more: Nasima Razmyar blames Helsinki’s salary mess: “The office is run by the mayor and head of office”

Horn castle says that he is now on vacation, but that he himself had to interrupt his vacation once during the summer due to the investigation of salary payment difficulties.

He states directly that he cannot assess whether the solutions made so far are sufficient to solve the chaotic situation.

Formally, it was Sarvilinna that made the final decision to acquire Sarastia, the salary payment program at the center of the chaos. He says that he considered the explanations he received as the background for the decision to be sufficient.

The trade association Tehy has filed a criminal complaint related to the City of Helsinki’s actions regarding salary payment problems. Sarvilinna states that he has been mentioned in the criminal report. That’s also why he doesn’t want to comment further on personal responsibilities in the question.

“Sarastia and the city of Helsinki have a joint responsibility.”

Read more: Tehy filed a criminal complaint about the salary chaos in Helsinki

The acquisition of Sarastia has progressed in the city of Helsinki also with the blessing of the city government and the city council. However, Nasima Razmyar commented to HS that, in her opinion, the issue has been presented to politicians too optimistically.

Sarvilinna says that he does not want to take a stand on the claim.

“I don’t want to publicly comment on the city’s information flow.”

He states in general that solving the problems will certainly still require money. Sarvilinna says that the extent of the problems that arose was a surprise to him.

Most precisely Among the city of Helsinki’s civil service managers, the city’s human resources director knows about the various stages of Sarastia’s acquisition Nina Gross and digitization director Mikko Rusama. They did the pre-acquisition survey work.

Nina Gros says that behind the system change was the obsolescence of the old salary payment system.

Attempts were made to develop a new version of the Hijat system in use with CGI, the supplier of the old system, for five years, but the project failed.

In the end, CGI promised technical support for the use of Hijat until the end of 2022. By then, the city had to find a new alternative.

According to Gros, they decided on Sarastia because there was no ready-made model on the market for a city the size of Helsinki. So we had to choose a partner with whom we would tailor our own version of the salary payment system for Helsinki.

“There was a municipality-owned Sarastia on the market, which already had the municipal collective agreements inside. In addition, we knew that Espoo would implement the system a year earlier than us, so Espoo’s lessons would be able to be utilized in our implementation. From that point of view, the choice seemed safe,” states Gros.

The digitization director says the same Mikko Rusama. Rusama states that there were hardly any good alternatives for Sarastia.

The new salary payment system was not tendered, although it is required by law for public procurement. In the case of Sarastia, the city joined the municipality-owned Sarastia as a partner. The transition was successful as a related unit acquisition, in which case tendering is not required.

Nina Gros says that the result would probably have been the same in the end, even if the purchase had been tendered.

The good thing about the acquisition of the affiliated unit was that the decision was made quickly for the city, which lived under time pressure. Competition would have slowed down the transition. However, Gros says that, from his point of view, the matter did not have much weight in the decisions made.

The decision to adopt Sarastia proceeded in such a way that the HR unit led by Gros and the digitalization unit led by Rusama made preparations for the matter in cooperation. According to Rusama, the preparation went through the digital management group and the city’s management group.

After this, the matter went to political decision-making. The Group Division of the City Council decided that Helsinki will join the municipality-owned Sarastia company.

“The chancellor, on the other hand, made an official decision on this acquisition based on the preparation of the HR and digital units,” says Rusama.

Town’s payroll accountants have characterized HS’s education as lousy.

The same is also said by supervisors whose job description has changed. Their job is to fill out forms related to payroll and approve changes recorded by employees. However, due to the lack of training, supervisors do not have the skills to do this, and incorrectly filled forms cause errors in the payment of wages.

Read more: The headmaster from Helsinki was made a “payroll accountant” with almost no training – Exhausted on sick leave

Why then was education so lacking?

Gros says that the corona pandemic that struck made it difficult to organize trainings. However, the pandemic had already started when the decision was made to move to Sarastia in the fall of 2020. Gros frankly admits that the city was not properly prepared for the fact that the pandemic would be prolonged and the trainings would have to be organized remotely.

The principal interviewed by HS said in July that the proper instructions for the new system have only come this summer.

CEO of Sarastia Mika Kantola explains to HS that all customers are sent the same basic instructions.

However, according to Kantola, the system has different, customer-specific solutions for all customers. Therefore, the basic instructions are not all-inclusive.

“This process-specific guidance has been made in cooperation with Sarastia and Helsinki,” he says.

One serious problem has also been the dire shortage of competent payroll accountants. When experts have not been found on the market, Helsinki plans to train them itself. However, developing into a professional takes time.

Nina Gros still says that she believes that the situation will improve little by little.

Various something has gone wrong. Who is responsible for this situation?

“Yes, everyone bears the responsibility here,” says Gros.

He emphasizes that Sarastia also has extensive responsibility for the problems. Digitization director Rusama is on the same lines.

“Sarastia basically has to make sure that their system works. Each decision-maker in this process also bears his own responsibility.”

Rusama says that the contract between Sarastia and the city has compensation clauses that will bring the city at least some kind of compensation for the problems.

Sarastian Kantola continues to emphasize that the system itself does not make mistakes.

“I want to emphasize that it’s not just about changing the salary engine, but also about changing the entire process,” says Kantola.

With the process, he refers to the fact that both supervisors and wage earners use the Sarastia system themselves, whereas before the information was sent to payroll.

“Time will fix this. Over time, the system becomes more familiar and the number of errors starts to fall.”

“Of course, we have partial responsibility, naturally.”